Albania's Reemergence after World War I

Albania's political confusion continued in the wake of World War I.
The country lacked a single recognized government, and Albanians feared,
with justification, that Greece, Yugoslavia, and Italy would succeed in
extinguishing Albania's independence and carve up the country. Italian
forces controlled Albanian political activity in the areas they
occupied. The Serbs, who largely dictated Yugoslavia's foreign policy
after World War I, strove to take over northern Albania, and the Greeks
sought to control southern Albania. A delegation sent by a postwar
Albanian National Assembly that met at Durrės in December 1918 defended
Albanian interests at the Paris Peace Conference, but the conference
denied Albania official representation. The National Assembly, anxious
to keep Albania intact, expressed willingness to accept Italian
protection and even an Italian prince as a ruler so long as it would
mean Albania did not lose territory.

In January 1919, the Serbs attacked the Albanian inhabitants of
Gusinje and Plav with regular troops and artillery after the Albanians
had appealed to Britain for protection. The Serb forces massacred some
of the Albanians and forced about 35,000 people to flee to the Shkodėr
area. In Kosovo the Serbs subjected the Albanians to brutalities,
stripped them of territory under the guise of land reform, and rewarded
Serb colonists with homesteads. In response, Albanians continued
guerrilla warfare in both Serbia and Montenegro.

In January 1920, at the Paris Peace Conference negotiators from
France, Britain, and Greece agreed to divide Albania among Yugoslavia,
Italy, and Greece as a diplomatic expedient aimed at finding a
compromise solution to the territorial conflict between Italy and
Yugoslavia. The deal was done behind the Albanians' backs and in the
absence of a United States negotiator.

Members of a second Albanian National Assembly held at Lushnjė in
January 1920 rejected the partition plan and warned that Albanians would
take up arms to defend their country's independence and territorial
integrity. The Lushnjė National Assembly appointed a four-man regency
to rule the country. A bicameral parliament was also created, appointing
members of its own ranks to an upper chamber, the Senate. An elected
lower chamber, the Chamber of Deputies, had one deputy for every 12,000
people in Albania and one for the Albanian community in the United
States. In February 1920, the government moved to Tiranė, which became
Albania's capital.

One month later, in March 1920, President Woodrow Wilson intervened
to block the Paris agreement. The United States underscored its support
for Albania's independence by recognizing an official Albanian
representative to Washington, and in December the League of Nations
recognized Albania's sovereignty by admitting it as a full member. The
country's borders, however, remained unsettled.

Albania's new government campaigned to end Italy's occupation of the
country and encouraged peasants to harass Italian forces. In September
1920, after a siege of Italian-occupied Vlorė by Albanian forces, Rome
abandoned its claims on Albania under the 1915 Treaty of London and
withdrew its forces from all of Albania except Sazan Island at the mouth
of Vlorė Bay. Yugoslavia pursued a predatory policy toward Albania, and
after Albanian tribesmen clashed with Serb forces occupying the northern
part of the country, Yugoslav troops took to burning villages and
killing and expelling civilians. Belgrade then recruited a disgruntled
Geg clan chief, Gjon Markagjoni, who led his Roman Catholic Mirditė
tribesmen in a rebellion against the regency and parliament. Markagjoni
proclaimed the founding of an independent "Mirditė Republic"
based in Prizren, which had fallen into Serbian hands during the First
Balkan War. Finally, in November 1921, Yugoslav troops invaded Albanian
territory beyond the areas they were already occupying. Outraged at the
Yugoslav attack and Belgrade's lies, the League of Nations dispatched a
commission composed of representatives of Britain, France, Italy, and
Japan that reaffirmed Albania's 1913 borders. Yugoslavia complained
bitterly but had no choice but to withdraw its troops. The so-called
Mirditė Republic disappeared.